The long awaited patch 0.6 is now online! We’re introducing improvements in pretty much all the systems and the gameplay. Most notably, we’ve rebalanced combat completely and we’re revealing a brand new game mode to challenge your building skills and tactical combat abilities.

The new game mode is called Conquest. You’ll be tasked not only with building and defending a fortress, but expanding across the map and holding other capture points. Roaming armies of corruptrons will attempt to stop you in the process. This game mode is closer to the gameplay we’ve always been aiming for, making Castle Story much more of a RTS game now than before.

That’s not the only new feature we’re introducing however, here’s what you can expect to see in this new release:

MAJOR FEATURES

Corruptrons get a new recruit!

We’re introducing a new enemy type, which we lovingly dubbed “the minitron”. He is small and weak individually, but can swarm bricktron soldiers when in great numbers.

This patch also introduces teamwork between the corruptrons: the big corruptrons can grab minitrons and throw them right over your castle’s walls. We hope the minitron will introduce battles that are more dynamic for players who like to build impregnable fortresses.

Multiplayer Upgrades!

In the last release, we unveiled the prototype of the multiplayer portion of the game. We know that a lot of players want to be able to play the full experience of Castle Story with their friends, so we invested our full-time development into it. As a result, a LOT of issues have been fixed, and a lot of features have been added to make the experience more streamlined. A brand new lobby will allow you to easily host games, choose your faction, wait for your friends, and chat while you’re at it. Right now, up to 4 players can join a multiplayer lobby.

The multiplayer itself was vastly improved: we moved to a “Server/Client” architecture. This allows players with good computers to host the game for players with weaker computers, and still have a good time.Combat and tasks are all now fully supported, along with the saving and loading of multiplayer matches.

Full scale combat: Introducing Conquest mode!One the most asked for feature from players was a way to “win” in Castle Story. We’re very happy to introduce a brand new gamemode in which you can do just that: Conquest.

In Conquest, multiple crystals are spread throughout the map, and your goal is to gain control of all of them. But against you are the Corruptrons, also attempting to do the same. The old gamemode of survival, which we have now renamed Invasion, required you to reclude inside a fortress wave after wave. Conquest forces you instead to play both defensively and offensively against them by building outposts around crystals you control, and amass armies to capture crystals that they control.

Don’t get your hopes up too much if you wanted an easy win, however. The corruptrons should give you trouble at every step of the way, thanks to the massive AI upgrade.

Massive pathfinding upgradeThe pathfinding of the Bricktrons has been a roadblock for us as well as the players for a long time. Queries could take several seconds to find a path to their destination, and this would cause lag. We committed to fix this, and built a system that is 100 to 5000 times better to the old system algorithmically. This is not an hyperbole, in our biggest map, Big Island, a Bricktron can find exactly the path he needs to take to cross the island immediately, something which the old pathfinding system simply was incapable of doing. Thanks to this, the enemy’s AI is smarter: they can decide to jump down down a cliff if they determine it will lead them somewhere useful, or even dig right through a mountain to get to your perched archers( so you can forget about building impossible-to-reach castles!).

MINOR FEATURES

Revamped combat: Shield Block, Stamina and balance tweaks!We’ve completely rebalanced the combat to make the game more interesting. Introducing stamina for the knight, and the return of the shield block. The intention is to make the knight the backbone of your army by making him more resilient against all types of enemies.

For example, a knight can withstand a big Corruptron's punch to the cost of his full stamina bar. Small corruptrons will need to punch away at the knight’s shield a few times before hurting him unless they flank him.

Medium corruptrons were also given and HP boost to allow them to absorb one or two arrows, and given a speed boost to make them a much more dangerous foe. The minitron took over the role of cannon fodder.

Tunnel upgradeThe Tunnel task dated from the prototype days, so we gave it some love and completely modernised it. You can form your tunnels simply by dragging around handles, and connecting parts together. It’s also very easy to create slopes going up or down now, which was unnecessarily difficult to do with the old system. The whole process is a lot cleaner and friendlier, and the visuals are a lot less confusing. We’re also preventing the possibility of making tunnel designs that would collapse on your workers.

Wooden RampsThe introduction of the new wood system in the update 0.5 was a huge improvement, but lacked one simple thing. Wooden ramps to create multi storey scaffolding.

The ramp system has been carefully designed to allow building tons of different things. Obviously, you can create ramps, but you can probably create roofs too and a bunch of other complex structures.

UI UpgradesWe have also continued upgrading our UI all over, adding tons of quality of life improvements:New taskbar commands.Cleaner selection Circles and HP gauges.A clean multiplayer lobby and in-game chat box.Updated info over the character’s heads.

Customizable Key bindingsWe applied a fresh layer of paint to the keybindings menu. It now allows you to set up alternate key bindings for actions, the whole interface is overall easier to use, and the names of the actions are more descriptive.

IMPORTANT WARNING: The saved game compatibility has been temporarily broken. We’re working on a save updater to port earlier saved games to this latest version for the next minor patch. YOUR SAVES WILL NOT APPEAR IN THE MAIN MENU, BUT THEY STILL EXIST, THEY ARE SIMPLY HIDDEN. You can always back them up by visiting the /info directory in your game installation folder.

Anyways, if you’re reading this, thanks for sticking with us so far. We sincerely think this is the most fun update we’ve ever put up, we hope that you have as much fun playing is as we’ve had making it!

Nice work with the Game, looking forward for you to add more units, enemies(clone the corruptron and add some horns and stuff) , so far works ok, but tends to suffer from FPS lag, maybe is the Unity Game Engine, as I currently run Skyrim with 500 mods and many demanding games on GTX 260m 1 gb and GTX 870m 3 gb. The enemy AI is OK but you should consider a quick emergency worker to warrior and back feature. After all many times a single hit by a medium or large enemy unit send up to 5 warrior's to the sea. The Archer might benefit from a better rate of fire, and simple armor upgrade could also help, you could also clone it as Wizard/Conjurer/Necromancer type. Also the Unit recruitment needs a Faster cycle.Be well and nice project.